Katherine

Art Carney and Jane Wyatt are perfectly cast as the upscale Denver parents of Katherine Alman, a renegade revolutionary in the 1960s. She had a life of privilege but gave it all up to make the world a better place. In this film, she is played by the wonderful Sissy Spacek. Henry Winkler plays her boyfriend who is equally liberal in the film. Julie Kavner plays her college friend. There are others in the film. It's an okay film even though I had technical difficulties towards the end which I think left us hanging for more. According to the internet, it's loosely based on the life of Diana Oughton. Anyway, the film goes back and forth over Katherine's life in a beautiful estate in Denver, Colorado where she was raised with a horse, tennis court, and pool by loving and supportive parents to her college days. After college, she went to Peru where she taught to children and adults but she seen as a threat to the system. She returns to the United States where she teaches African American children in the South where she meets Henry Winkler's character. The movie returns to how she must conduct a final mission. It's chilling but the end is cut short. We never really know what her final mission is but we know who she was.

Though a low budget TV movie of the 1970's, Katherine hits a nerve today because it sends a message to a complacent society that has gotten caught up in pop culture and comfort food that injustices are committed everyday by our government with most of us barely noticing. It's a good film for young people who are beginning to grapple with the world around them to learn that things aren't as good as they always seemed in their cocoon of upbringing and schooling. And it is a wake-up call, like a lot of today's new indie films (Syriana, Goodnight and Good Luck and The Constant Gardner) for the rest of us who live for the next episode of The Sopranos or Desperate Housewives between days at work. Despite some drawbacks of the production, Sissy Spacek's impassioned performance effectively sends the movie's message home.

"Inspired by true events, 'Katherine' documents the conversion (in flashback style) of a sensitive '60s activist to radical extremist. Played with great sensitivity, and foreshadowing the great roles that would come to characterize her career, Sissy Spacek delivers a nuanced and ultimately tragic performance as the title's lead. Spacek is ably supported in this drama by legendary actors Art Carney and Jane Wyatt as her parents, and Henry Winkler as a fellow activist and supportive boyfriend," according to the DVD sleeve.

Writer/director Jeremy Kagan's "ABC Sunday Night Movie" seems to have been loosely based on "Weather Underground" member Diana Oughton's life, and also followed the big media story involving "Symbionese Liberation Army" recruit Patty Hearst. At the time, the American TV viewing public would have been familiar with the stories involving young women who gave up affluent socialite status to join revolutionary militia groups. With everyone wondering "Why?", "Katherine" provides an answer.

Ms. Spacek's glasses and wigs look like props sitting on her head, even when meant to look real. Still, Spacek is a fine actress, and worth watching. Taking a "Happy Days" break, Mr. Winkler always shines in these 1970s roles; he is so unlike his "Fonzie" character. Mr. Carney, experiencing a career resurgence, was predictably Emmy-nominated for an "Outstanding Single Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama Special". Television veterans Ms. Wyatt (once the mother on "Father Knows Best") and Julie Kavner (then little sister to "Rhoda") also appear. The song hits are not the original recordings.

***** Katherine (10/5/75) Jeremy Kagan ~ Sissy Spacek, Henry Winkler, Art Carney, Jane Wyatt

I saw this only once--when it was on TV in 1975. I was 20 years old. It left a powerful impact on me. I hadn't yet heard of Sissy Spacek or Henry Winkler. I deeply "identified" with Katherine as the movie began. I kept thinking "Yes, she's doing the right thing!" Then in the end... I felt the way a balloon must feel when it's popped. I realized the error of her ways--and mine. I realized I too could've been sucked right into all that. I've never, ever forgotten this story. Someday I'll try to get my granddaughters to watch it with me.

For a 70's TV movie, this is strong stuff. Katherine tells the story of a pampered, UMC, boomer-princess who gets the virus of guilt when she is confronted with injustices in the third world and, you guessed it, turns Marxist.

I sound flippant here, but you can just guess the depths of depravity Sissy Spacek's Katherine--within the bounds of TV sensibilities--goes in her radicalized zeal to tear down the capitalist, fascist, materialistic, racist, showered and shaved system. And yet, when she is confronted with her lover's (Henry Winkler) using of revolutionary principles to justify his banging other girls, you can see her losing her last shred of sanity, her desire to someday have marriage to enjoy and family to care for. The transformation of Katherine from seeker of justice to angry, depraved killer is heartbreaking.

Spacek shows the sort of talent that has made her such a seriously good actress, Winkler is a journeyman actor himself (and you learn to hate him as his idealism morphs into something darker), Art Carney and Jane Wyatt are excellent as Katherine's good Democrat parents who enable her radicalization by funding their daughter as she dives deeper into the underground, and the rest of the supporting cast enriches the story.

The only drag on Katherine is the fact that it is a TV Movie (although the version I saw had a few moments of violence, drugs, and semi-nudity added; presumably for a theatrical release in Europe?). The film just doesn't have enough time to completely tell the story of the radicalized 60's and early 70's. Even though it's told in flashbacks and documentarian interviews (and the interviews with Spacek are so chillingly peaceful, you suspect there's something really bad coming), the time constraints truncate the story. You're left with an almost-told story, not a complete one.

Yet, the strength of the performances and the topicality of the story keep Katherine alive, watchable, and ultimately, crushingly sad.